Does financial aid money in the bank count towards EFC?

[S693ee]

@circuitrider

Wait, what college hands out grant money in the form of a check? Was this for books and room and board?

Banking money. That’s how you received the FA money.

@twoinanddone

I’ve never heard of an audit where the student wasn’t allowed to exclude the FA money because it was co-mingled, but I can’t tell you it never happened.

What do you mean you can’t tell me it never happened?

@twoinanddone

What you can’t do (or aren’t supposed to do) is spend all the FA money you’ve saved and then ‘replace’ it. If you have $10k in excess FA and at some point your account is reduced to $5k but then you save some other money (income, gift, lottery winnings), THAT money is not excess FA. If your FA savings goes down to $5k, that’s the amount you can exclude as FA.

What if I spend the money and never replace it? What if like I gave my money to someone and never replaced that money? What happens then??? What happens if I spend all the co-mingled money and the only money left is FA money? That will be easily excluded? And what does it mean for FA money to be excluded? It means it won’t count towards EFC?

Thanks!